Start from 19 curated places around Taylors Falls, MN, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Tangled up in Blue
A family-operated dinner room on Bench Street that is the serious dining option in Taylors Falls — the husband cooks, the wife runs the floor, and the result is the kind of focused, personal cooking you'd drive significantly further for. Beef Wellington, crab cakes, and seasonal seafood are the anchors of a menu that changes around what's available. Friday and Saturday only, by reservation, and they book out weeks in advance. The room is small and the experience is unhurried.
Drive-In
The Taylors Falls Drive-In has been a genuine 1950s drive-in since 1956 — carhops in poodle skirts, root beer floats mixed to order, burgers hand-formed in the kitchen, and a working mini golf course on the property. It is not a retro-themed restaurant; it is the actual original thing, still operated seasonally from spring through fall. The root beer float is the thing to order and the thing to remember the town by.
Trails & outdoors
Interstate State Park Loop Trail
The signature circuit at Minnesota's Interstate State Park: the River Trail from the glacial pothole area descends to the St. Croix riverbank and connects to the Railroad Trail for a flat return, covering the full range of the park's geology in about 2.5 miles. You walk past potholes, along the river at water level, through forested bluffs, and back along the old rail grade. The most complete way to experience the park without a full hiking day.
Pothole and Horizon Rock Trail
The best hike in the Wisconsin half of Interstate Park: a 1.8-mile loop that combines the pothole display with the climb up to Horizon Rock, a bluff-top prairie clearing where you look out over the full width of the St. Croix valley. The ascent gains 354 feet through a maple-oak forest that is brilliant in fall, and the top delivers the wide-angle view that the Minnesota side — lower in the gorge — does not offer. Considerably quieter than the MN side on summer weekends.
Things to do
Taylors Falls Canoe & Kayak Rental
Operating since 1910 and based inside Minnesota Interstate State Park, this family outfitter offers the most satisfying outdoor activity in the area: a 2-6 hour self-guided paddle down the St. Croix from the park to either the Osceola Landing or William O'Brien State Park access, with shuttle service that returns you to your car. The river in this stretch is calm enough for beginners and scenic enough to hold the attention of experienced paddlers. Booking in advance for summer weekends is essential.
Taylors Falls Scenic Boat Tours
Paddlewheel boats have been running narrated excursions through the St. Croix Dalles since 1906, and the 90-minute tour remains the most effortless way to see the gorge — the basalt walls, the glacially carved formations, and the geology that makes this stretch of river a National Scenic Riverway. The pilot-narrated tours are genuinely informative without being dry, and the specialty wine cruises on select evenings offer a different version of the same beautiful route.
Landmarks & sights
Interstate State Park
The geologic anchor of the entire region: a state park on the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River where retreating glaciers left behind the world's highest concentration of glacial potholes — cylindrical rock chambers up to 60 feet deep, carved by swirling boulders trapped in meltwater currents. The park also delivers dramatic basalt cliff overlooks above the St. Croix Dalles gorge. The short River Trail from the pothole area to the campground and back is the essential 2.5-mile circuit.
Folsom House
A New England-style Greek Revival house from the lumber boom era, preserved exactly as it stood when a Minnesota state senator lived here in the 1850s, sitting at the top of the Angels Hill Historic District with a view down to the river gorge. Minnesota Historical Society guides lead tours through period rooms furnished with original belongings — the most intact small-town lumber-era home left in Minnesota. The Angels Hill neighborhood surrounding it is itself listed on the National Register of Historic Places.